Tennessee football had some horrendous outing with Butch Jones as head coach. Here are the Volunteers’ 10 worst losses under his leadership.
Note: This post is part of a series All for Tennessee is doing recapping Butch Jones’s career as Tennessee football’s head coach. For more stories, click here.
As Butch Jones sold Rocky Top on the ‘brick-by-brick’ mantra, Tennessee football consistently had wins that seemed to signal another ‘brick’ in the process. However, the Vols had numerous heartbreaking losses at the same time, which slowed their progress.
Then, we figured out the bricks were never put together, and a series of losses exposed the truth that existed in those original heartbreaking losses: Jones wasn’t a competent enough in-game manager to be in the SEC. That’s why he’s no longer head coach of the Vols anymore.
His career came apart because of a series of heartbreaking losses and some that were downright embarrassing. The combination of the two made the last five years very frustrating for Tennessee football fans.
In this post, we’re going to take a look at the worst losses of Jones’s career. The criteria for these losses include a few things: the level of embarrassment or heartbreak, the implications of the game, the quality of the opponent and whether or not that opponent was a rival.
Just losing to a rival, even if they’re the Georgia Bulldogs or Alabama Crimson Tide, is not enough. It has to create a level of frustration and deflation among fans after the loss happened.
For instance, the 19-14 loss to Alabama in 2015 was heartbreaking but nothing to be ashamed of. The same holds true for the heartbreaking losses to Georgia in 2013 and 2014. All three of those losses showed a program on the rise at the time, so fans were not angry about the outcome, even if they wanted the win. And luckily for Jones, he wasn’t there for the 2017 Vanderbilt game, which would have also made this list otherwise.
The games we’re mentioning, however, had fans calling into radio shows and rightfully screaming in anger. So let’s take a look at the ones that make the list. These are Butch Jones’s 10 worst losses as Tennessee football’s head coach.